or the connection we have sought to establish is wanting.  But you know who is your unsparing personal enemy; and, after the Sovereign himself, no man in this world is so powerful; while the Sovereign himself is, owing to the restraints of his position, less active, less familiar with others, less acquainted with what goes on out of his own sight.  Again I say we can avenge; but against secret murder our powers only avail to deter.  If we would save, it must be by the use of natural precautions.”

What he said made me desirous of some conversation with Eveena before I started on a meditated visit to the Palace.  If I could not tell her the whole truth, she knew something; and I thought it possible on this occasion so far to enlighten her as to consult with her how the secret of my intended journeys should in future be kept.  But I found no chance of speaking to her until, shortly before my departure, I was called upon to decide one of the childish disputes which constantly disturbed my temper and comfort.  Mere fleabites they were; but fleas have often kept me awake a whole night in a Turkish caravanserai, and half-a-dozen mosquitos inside an Indian tent have broken up the sleep earned on a long day’s march or a sharply contested battlefield.  I need only say that I extorted at last from Eveena a clear statement of the trifle at issue, which flatly contradicted those of the four participants in the squabble.  She began to suggest a means of proving the truth, and they broke into angry clamour.  Silencing them all peremptorily, I drew Eveena into my own chamber, and, when assured that we were unheard, reproved her for proposing to support her own word by evidence.

“Do you think,” I said, “that any possible proof would induce me to doubt you, or add anything to the assurance I derive from your word?”

“But,” she urged, “that cannot be just to others.  They must feel it very hard that your love for me makes you take all I say for truth.”  “Not my love, but my knowledge.  ‘Be not righteous overmuch.’  Don’t forget that they know the truth as well as you.”

I would hear no more, and passed to the matter I had at heart....

Earnestly, and in a sense sincerely, as upon my second audience I had thanked the Campta for his munificent gifts, no day passed that I would not thankfully have renounced the wealth he had bestowed if I could at the same time have renounced what was, in intention and according to Martial ideas, the most gracious and most remarkable of his favours.  On the present occasion I thought for a moment that such renunciation might have been possible.

The Prince had, after our first interview, observed with regard to every point of my story on which I had been carefully silent a delicacy of reserve very unusual among Martialists, and quite unintelligible to his Court and officers.  To-day the conversation in public turned again upon my voyage.  Endo and another studiously directed it to the method of steering, and the intentional diminution of speed in my descent, corresponding to its gradual increase at the commencement of the journey—­points at which they hoped to find some opening to the mystery of the motive force.  The Prince relieved me from some embarrassment by requesting me as usual to attend him to his private cabinet.